ENG vs IND 2018: Virender Sehwag Slams Virat Kohli For His Comments After Southampton Defeat

Former India opener Virender Sehwag berated Virat Kohli for his comments after losing the fourth England vs India Test at Southampton. 

India’s batting woes in overseas continued. And the latest failure cost them yet another overseas Test series. Chasing 245, the world number one Test made a mess of it. Barring the brief spell when Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane were batting, India never looked in contention to chase down the total and level the series.

India’s top three –  KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan and Cheteshwar Pujara- were back in the hut with just 22 runs on the board. Kohli and Rahane then added 101 runs to revive India’s hopes. However, once Moeen Ali dismissed Kohli for 58, the remaining batsmen fell like a pack of cards. In the end, India were all out for 184, thus losing the game by 60 runs. India’s batsmen had fared poorly in the first two Tests too. At Trent Bridge, they had failed to chase down 194. In the second, they were all out for 107 and 130 to suffer an innings defeat.

An improved show at Trent Bridge brought them some respite but their latest performance has shown that it was just a flash in the pan.

And now Virender Sehwag has criticised Kohli for his reaction after the series defeat.

While giving due credit to England in the post-match press conference, Kohli had stated that he was happy that the team had competed well in the series and just regretted that they couldn’t cross the final hurdle of winning. He had also said that there were not many negatives for his side from the game.

“We already learnt the art of winning single Test matches under Sourav Ganguly but we also couldn’t win a series overseas. So the problems are still the same. But the difference then was that our batsmen used to score runs but we didn’t have the bowling to take 20 wickets. Nowadays we have the bowling to do that but not the batsmen who can score runs,” Sehwag told IndiaTv.

“We haven’t scored more than 300 runs in an innings in the last few Tests, except maybe once or twice. It is very easy to say that ‘we are trying’, ‘we are not able to cross the line’ or ‘we will try in the next series’ but we have been repeating these statements for a decade now and we still haven’t won a series in Australia, England and South Africa in this period,” he added.

India, meanwhile, will have a chance to salvage some pride when they take on England in the final Test, starting September 7 at The Oval.